Curriculum Resource: Teaching Evolution

So if you are a family that doesn't believe in and/or doesn't teach evolution, then you want to skip this post.

But for those who do...

I found a great series of lesson plans about teaching evolution on a website hosted by Indiana University.  A heads up:  these lessons were developed for teaching high school biology.  However, the authors say they could be done with some modifications at the middle school level, and I'm certainly finding some resources that are appropriate for our middle school Ocean Studies coop this year.

There are over 50 lesson plans or mini lessons that are available on line, along with some titles that I suppose they are still developing.  It is broken into two big categories:

• Evolution Patterns
• Evolution Processes

Subcategories under Evolution Patterns are:

• Geological/Paleontological Patterns:  General
• Human Evolution Patterns
• Classification, Hierarchy, Relationships

The subcategories under Evolution Processes are:

• Adaptations, Imperfections, Contrivances
• Variation and Natural Selection
• Speciation
• Macroevolution

So it is a nice, comprehensive approach to the topic, it seems to me.  I haven't looked at all the lessons, but most of the ones I did read had an experiment or hands-on component.  Not all of them are suitable for an at-home science lab, but many of them can be done in a homeschool setting.

So check them out here.

Curriculum Resource: Explaining Fall Colors

Today was such a gorgeous fall day--sunny and crisp, with the leaves finally starting to change color here in Piedmont North Carolina.  So it is time for me to review the exact chemistry behind the transformation of our local trees.  I know the general principle, but I always forget what the exact chemical processes are that produce the specific colors.

But I stumbled upon this explanation from USA Today that I thought was really good.  It has a nice interactive graphic that shows the true colors in leaves being hidden by the chlorophyll during the summer, but eventually being revealed in the fall.  They also have a part where you can see which types of leaves turn which colors.  Meanwhile, the article reviews the chemical processes that produce yellow versus red leaves.  Just what I was looking for!

You can check out the article here.

Women in Biology Offers Seminar for Triangle Area Middle School Girls

If you live in the Triangle NC area and have a girl in grades 6-8, this announcement could be for you!  On Wednesday, October 26, the  RTP chapter of Women in Biology is sponsoring a Bioscience Career Leadership for Girls event at Biogen Idec, a local biotechnology firm with a focus on neurological disorders.  The FREE seminar, which is open ONLY to female students in 6-8th grades, is geared to increasing girls' knowledge about, and well as interest in, a career in biology.

After check-in at 3:45 PM, the students will spend from 4:00-6:00 getting a tour of the facility, discussing the research and other work done there, and listening to some other formal science-related presentations.  Then from 6:00-6:45 PM, the girls will have a pizza party with female professionals at Biogen Idec as well as other members of Women in Biology.  This will give them an informal opportunity to raise any questions related to educational requirements, personal characteristics, outside experiences, or other matters related to pursing a career in biology.

Student MUST pre-register in order to attend.  If you have a student in that grade range who would be interested, you can register them here via the WIB website.

The middle school years are a great time for students to be exploring careers and different types of workplaces, so this looks like it could be a great opportunity for that, even if your girl(s) doesn't end up in a science career.

Curriculum Resource: Live Preservers Game Teaches Evolutionary Biology

Here is a great game I found that is perfect for the middle school biology classroom.  It is called Life Preservers, and it was developed by the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at Michigan State University.  The game was developed to teach evolutionary biology concepts, but it does it with a twist.  In the game, aliens are going to ship two invasive species to colonize on Earth for their own purposes, but you only have the ability to eliminate one of them before they start reproducing.  The point of the game is to figure out which one will cause the least damage if it is allowed to stay, based on how it will effect the evolutionary development of this planet's ecosystem.

So you begin by learning something about the planet's historical evolution.  The game has two parts; one is about the time of the dinosaurs, while the other is the rise of mammals, including humans.  In each part, you learn about some of the species of those times that became extinct, and some that have continued to develop into modern times.  Eventually, the characteristics of the two potential alien species are revealed, and you get to choose which one to eliminate and which one to allow to land and to see what changes it brings to life on Earth.

So it is quite an interesting and non-obvious challenge (because both will have some kinds of impacts).  There is a lot of good content, and it is not set up as a win/lose scenario.  Also, playing both parts of the game takes 45 minutes, so it can be done within a typical class period (if you are doing it in an actual classroom scenario).

For more information on the game, visit the teachers website.  But if you want to just jump right in and start saving the planet from alien invasive species, try your hand at Life Preservers.

Curriculum Resource: Who Wants to Win (fake) $1,000,000--Science Edition

As we start to try to ease back into classes, it's fun to use games to review what we do (or do not) know.    The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Lab (generally known as the Jefferson Lab) has an online resource you can use to brush up on your students' math and science skills.

In the game, Who Wants to Win $1,000,000, students play a game according to the rules of the TV show (or, at least, I presume so--I've never actually seen the show).  The questions cover not only nuclear physics (which is the specialty of the Jefferson Lab), but also math, biology, chemistry, and general scientific principles.  The questions vary in difficulty, but most are appropriate to a middle school level.

Or, if you don't want to use them with your students or children, you can have fun playing by yourself.  I'll have to admit, I haven't won the (fake) million dollars myself yet.  I've gotten up to $500,000, but that last question is a toughie....

Curriculum Resource: WolfQuest, a North Carolina Addendum

Just a couple of days ago I wrote a post about the free online wildlife simulation game, WolfQuest.  In this game, you create a virtual wolf persona, and attempt to survive, join a pack, find a mate, create a den, and raise your young in the wilds of Yellowstone Park.  It is a great way for students to learn about wolf ecology.

However, there was a great article in this weekend's News and Observer paper that talked about the re-admission of red wolves in Eastern North Carolina.  This article is an example of a way to extend the learning from the online game by researching wolves in your local environment and the impact they have in the web of life.

So, for instance, in the game the wolves hunt elks and try to escape from grizzly bears.  But are there elks and grizzly bears in North Carolina?  Not outside the zoos or museum they aren't.  Those are not the prey or the predators that our local wolves need to deal with.  Nor, at least as far as I have been able to tell (and maybe we haven't played the game enough or haven't done well enough as wolves), has the game displayed what happens if your wolves get TOO good at eating other animals and producing too many young.

But this represents a great launching off point from the game.  After students have mastered the ability to survive as a wolf in Yellowstone, you can ask them how those results might differ if they were wolves in North Carolina (or whatever state or country you happen to be in).  In your local area, who benefits from the wolves?  Who is threatened by the wolves?  What could overpopulation of wolves in your state do?  This won't be found in the video game, but could inspire some interesting offline research, once students have identified with wolves through their game play.

I'm not going to answer that question for North Carolina because I want my son to investigate the issue himself (and he reads my blog).  But if people from other areas do this and find out what species win or lose when wolves are around, please add that information below in the comments.

Curriculum Resource: WolfQuest, a Wildlife Simulation Game

I know I've been writing about the arts a lot lately, which is the area that has been the focus of our summer.  However, we'll always doing other fun and interesting things as well.  My son pointed out that I hadn't written about something we've been doing for our science curriculum:  WolfQuest, an online game that teaches students about wolves.

WolfQuest, which was developed by the Minnesota Zoo and EduWeb, you learn about the lives of wolves by becoming one.  NO, I don't mean the trendy thing about becoming a werewolf; rather, the game is a 3D wildlife simulation where you play the role of a virtual wolf.  You set your own genetics--would you rather be stronger or faster?  would you rather be reddish or greyish?--then try to survive as a wolf in Yellowstone Park.

There are two formats for the game.  You can play the game by yourself on your own computer, where you must master such tasks as finding and hunting down food, attract a mate, find a den, and raise your cubs while protecting them from predators like coyotes and grizzly bears.  Or you can play the multi-player version online, where you and up to four other players can form a pack and work together to hunt and raise your families.  In the multi-player version, you can either hook up with other players in a public game, or you can establish a private game with people you know.  This makes WolfQuest a great game to introduce students to multi-player games if you are nervous about Internet security and such.

WolfQuest has a variety of educational materials available on the website, as well as an active online community where students can ask questions about the species from actual wolf biologists.  But the students I've seen play so far are mostly learning through the trial and error method of trying to keep their virtual wolf alive and reproducing successfully.  And the multi-player pack version can also teach them some valuable lessons about working as a team--a great skill to have whether you are a wolf or a human!

Oh, and I forgot to mention--the whole thing is FREE!  It's really well done, it conveys a lot of scientific content in a fun and engaging way, and the price is certainly right.

It certainly has been a big hit in our household.

Lesson Plan: Biodiversity Food Chain Game

If you've been reading my blog for the past couple of weeks, you may have the impression that all we do in our homeschool is to cook and to read picture books!  But that's completely untrue.  Sometimes we play with animals...

In this case, it's a ball python, also known as a royal python for its beautiful colors and patterns.  Actually, this snake, named "Tommy," is one of the Animal Ambassadors from the North Carolina Zoo.  The Animal Ambassadors are rehabilitated animals that can't be put into the wildlife setting of the Zoo, but instead are used for their educational programs.

Here in North Carolina, the state zoo offers a wonderful program for homeschoolers known as the Zoo Club.  For an extremely reasonable fee, they come to our community (all across the state) and do two educational programs, and we travel to the zoo for two others.  The educators there are excellent, and the zoo park itself is large and beautiful.

This year we've been doing a series of classes on the topic of Biodiversity.  One thing that the teacher did in the class today was the Biodiversity Food Chain Game.  To play this game, you need a mixture of photographs of edible plants, herbivores, and carnivores (one for each student) as well as a ball of string. The teacher hands out the photos, then picks up the ball of string and announces she is the sun.  Who has a photo of something that makes its food from the sun?  The students with pictures of a flower or tree or plan hold up their photos, and the teacher tosses one the ball of string, but still holds on to the end of the string.  The first student then tosses it to another student with a plant picture, holding onto a piece of the string as well.  This goes on until all the plant students are holding a piece of the string.  Then the teacher asks for students who have photos of animals that might eat those plants to hold up their photos.  Students with deer or rabbits or mice hold up their pictures, and the ball gets tossed to all of them.  Finally, the students are asked who might eat those creatures, and the same procedure is followed for all the students with carnivores, until all the students are holding a piece of the same string in a web-like formation.

Then the teacher asks what happens if all of one type of life--all daisies, maybe, or all frogs--disappear.  The student with that photo is then asked to let go of the string.  The web becomes limp, and the students have to pull harder to keep a taut web.  Then another species of life is eliminated, and then another.  Each time it becomes harder to fix the web, and the students naturally start moving further apart.  This goes on and on until you get something like this:

With this class, at least, the students were also pulling so hard on the string that it snapped, and the web fell apart completely.

Anyway, she did this with three different ages of children, pre-K up to middle school, and it worked really well with all the age groups.  It was a great way to demonstrate to students how the loss of even a single species creates problems for the entire food chain.  Kudos to the NC Zoo educators for coming up with a way to teach this important lesson to students in a way that they won't forget!

Curriculum Resources: Interactive Science Visualizations

I thought I would take a break from my educational theorizing today and share two science learning websites we've used lately (for those readers who are looking for some more concrete middle school resources).  My son has been taking two great science classes through one of our homeschool learning coops, but we've used these sites at home to reinforce and supplement the hands-on experiments and activities he has been doing in class.

First, he has been doing a class on Cells where they have been looking through the microscope, doing experiments, and making models of cells and their components.  But we found that Sheppard Software's Cell Games is a great review for what he has learned in class, as well as a way to extend his knowledge beyond animal cells to plants and bacteria as well.  These are really well-done visual depictions and short, comprehensible descriptions of the different organelles in each of the three types of cells.  First you learn about each one, then drag the correct label to a picture of each part of the cell.  Once they get them all right, they get to see a little animation, such as a cell dividing.  My one complaint is that I can't really call these games, since there is no random aspects to them, nor any choices besides matching the right items together. But as interactive visual manipulatives, they are really well done.  While his teacher deserves kudos for how well he recalled the names of the organelles of the animal cell (and corrected my pronunciation, since it's been a LOOONG time since I've taken biology), he said that the visualizations was helpful in understanding cell operations.

He has also been taking a class entitled "Mysteries of Geology," which has been focused on learning rock and mineral analysis, and spending time each class applying the theories and definitions they've learned to identify what the mysterious rock and mineral samples the teacher gives them actually are.  Looking to extend his geological concepts, we spent time this afternoon working with "Landform Detective," which is part of The Jason Project's unit on Geology called "Tectonic Fury."  (If you aren't familiar with The Jason Project, you should check them out; they are leaders in developing science curriculum for middle schoolers based on real-world, interactive scenarios--and it is all free online!)

Landform Detective is, once again, not really what I would call a game.  But it is an engaging and effective simulation that teaches how unique landscapes around the globe were formed.  What happens is that the student choses one of 25 landmarks, such as the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon, and compares how it looks now to how it looked thousands, millions, or even billions of years ago.  They then have to pick what geological processes--plate tectonics, volcanoes, erosion, glacier movement, etc.--produced that particular landform.  Many of the landmarks involved two or three processes, so they have to put them in the right order AS WELL AS associate them with the right timeframe (some processes require only a thousand years or so, while others took millions or billions).  However, before you think you'll have to get your masters in geology before your children with these simulations--their choices are constrained, usually to three or four options, and they can run simulations before making their final selections to see if each process is getting them towards the final product or not (and how long it takes).  Each stage is done separately, so they have to get the first process and time right before they can proceed to the next, and are given a clue if they choose a wrong answer.  In the end, a real geologist comes and says a little about the place, and the entire animation runs to simulate the entire period of geological activity.

As usual, my words don't do the simulations justice.  All I can say is that they are well-designed and well-executed, and are PERFECT for visual learners like my son.  While he fussed when I first told him we were going to check it out, he sat there and did it for almost an hour and a half straight until he had completed all 25 landforms.  And although it took him about an hour to do the first 15 scenarios, I think it only took him 20 minutes to do the last ten.  So in that first hour, he had really gotten a concept of what processes produced what kinds of effects on the land and which ones had to come before other ones, and he was really able to apply that to answer the last 10 quickly and accurately.  Also, to be perfectly honest, I had a bit more knowledge going in, so I led at least some of the first maybe, 6 or so scenarios, after that, my son was processing the visual information so much more quickly than I was that he was making a choice faster than I could even consider the options, and checking off his selection before I could say, "Do you think we should....?" whatever.

It was a major success in our household, so I recommend it to others wholeheartedly.  But I can't call it a game....

College Tuition Costs: An International Comparison

Today was a mixed day for us.  The good news was that today was the first class of our Zoo Club, a program run for homeschooling groups by the NC Zoo where they come and give two classes in our community, then we go to the Zoo for two more classes.  They have a variety of topics, but this year we chose to do all four programs on the theme "Biodiversity" in honor of 2010 being pronounced the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations.  We have three different classes broken down by age (the students range from 5 years old to 17) with almost 50 students total.  The Zoo educators are great, and the classes are always fun and packed with good information.

The bad news was that this is the last class that will be taught by our treasured Miss Melinda, who has been teaching our children Zoo classes for five years now.  Miss Melinda is from Australia, and now that her son has graduated from high school, they felt they had to return to Australia in order for him to be able to afford to go to college.

One issue is that since he is not an American citizen, so he is not eligible for most scholarships and student loans--which I can understand.  What I can't understand is the differential in the costs of universities in Australia and here.  Melinda's son was accepted into a highly-competitive computer science program at a university outside of Sydney--the only CS program in Australia with a concentration in game development.  And Melinda was thrilled to find out (besides the fact that he was accepted into the major he wanted) that the tuition for his degree program would cost the equivalent of $7,000 US.  That's NOT per year--that's for ALL FOUR YEARS of the program.

In contrast, a year's undergraduate tuition for in-state students at nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill costs nearly $7,000--$6,665 to be precise.  Of course, without the state subsidies, an out-of-state student pays $25,280 a year...just for tuition.  But, then, everything is relative; even that looks like a bargain compared to also-nearby Duke University, whose annual tuition is $39, 080 (what, they couldn't make it a nice round $39,000?).

There are definitely differences between American universities and those from other nations, but still... should it really cost four times as much to go to a competitive state school as a competitive Australian one?  Our family actually has personal experience with this.  Just last week, my brother flew over and installed my niece at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where the year's tuition, as an international student, will cost $19,584 (but UK students pay only $2,929 to attend one of Scotland's premier universities).  Compared to her other top college choice, the University of Chicago, whose annual tuition for undergraduates is $40,188, my brother thinks he's gotten a real bargain, even figuring in the costs of international travel and communications.

Oh well.  Maybe this will give our children more incentive to study foreign languages....